In search of Shania

Once I mentioned I was going to Timmins, people in Toronto stared at me in pity and concern.

Toronto considers itself to be cool and sophisticated. 'Blackflies,' shuddered my friend Jeff. 'Nothing comes close to being eaten alive by blackflies. They're like a Biblical plague, wee flying sharks.'

As blackfly season is June and July, and this was November, I wasn't worried. Instead, Jeff packed my car with winter survival kit. 'You never know,' he said darkly.

I had refused to fly because that wasn't what Shania Twain did when she was a kid. As I was going to research her roots for a biography, that seemed important.

Timmins is Shania's home town, 500 miles north of Toronto. If you ever look at a satellite picture of the Earth at night, Timmins is easy to spot. A pinprick of light surrounded by darkness.

That first trip on Route 11 is still etched in my mind. Travelling through driving rain, hail and snow and finally coming round a bend just before Temagami, I was dazzled by bright sunshine reflecting off a tiny lake, red and gold slivers lancing through the silver birches and the jack pines.

I pulled the car over, got out and laughed. I did that a lot. It beat truck stops.

Timmins is Canada's largest city, sprawling over 793,000 acres, including 100 lakes. Trees outnumber the 46,000 inhabitants 1,000 to one.

A working-class mining town founded on gold and zinc, it exists knowing that one day the last mine will close and then the town may die.

Half the population is French but there is none of the anti-Anglo attitude I've found in Quebec. Everybody drinks, everybody smokes and nearly everybody is genuinely welcoming.

Downtown is small. City Hall and most decent music bars are within a five-minute stroll of the Senator, one of the friendliest hotels I've been to.

I stayed in the Shania Twain Suite - 'big room' might be a fairer description. The Maple Leaf Hotel hasn't changed since Shania sang there in the early Eighties. At the Windsor Tavern I heard a pedal steel guitar player who could rival Nashville's best.

Don't expect high-class cuisine. Shania's personal favourites are Don's Pizzeria and 'poutine' (chips covered with cheese and gravy) from Chez Nous. Both of which taste great - after a few beers. Otherwise I'd recommend the pickerel at the Fishbowl.

Timmins's major tourist attraction is The Shania Twain Centre, a new building costing over £4.6million.

She has donated more than a million dollars-worth of her clothes (including her wedding dress) and awards, but at the opening last July much of that was not yet on show. I learned more about Shania from Timmins than from the centre.

The town has the usual amenities - cinemas, cable TV, fast-food chains, a shopping mall. But it was everything else that I liked - the sense of space, the feeling that man's presence is temporary. The scenery is compelling, lonely yet not threatening.

In winter the silence is interrupted only by the occasional roar of a snowmobile engine or the swish of crosscountry skis. In July, there is swimming, canoeing and fish that even an amateur can land. Blackfly season lasts only two weeks.

Sudbury, where Shania lived for about six years in the Seventies and where she gave the first concert of her 1998 tour, is three hours south of Timmins - its older, richer and meaner big brother.

After my hire car decided to set its alarm off spontaneously, I switched to a four-wheel drive. Ninety minutes down 144 is Mattagami First Nation. There Shania's stepfather Jerry Twain and his Ojibway relatives taught her how to survive in the wilderness.

Thirty years ago Mattagami was still an Indian Reserve. It had no electricity, sewage or water and could be reached only along a gravel road. The 20 houses were two-room wooden shacks heated by woodburning stoves and lit by oil lamps.

Some remain but the First Nation now has proper facilities. Its setting remains secluded and, in summer, idyllic - huddled on a point surrounded by Lake Mattagami and 13,000 acres of bush.